The Mormon Fringes Take Center Stage

Nathan Curtis Roberts’s “Yellow Tulips” and “Water Wisdom”

Nathan Curtis Roberts’s “Yellow Tulips” was recently nominated as a finalist for the 2025 AML (Association for Mormon Letters) best short story award, which makes sense, because it is arguably one of the most nationally prominent Mormon-themed short stories in a generation. Possibly since Walter Kirn’s “Mormon Eden” was published in The New Yorker in 1997. I’m sure that there have been others that I’m missing, but I’m missing them, so please note them in the comments below. I’m particularly interested in writing about Mormon stories that have received significant national recognition, so I may take you up on any of your suggestions and write about them.

Originally published in the Harvard Review (Issue 61), “Yellow Tulips” was subsequently anthologized in both The Best American Short Stories 2025 and The Pushcart Prize: The Best of the Small Presses 2026. Such double anthologization is indeed rare and truly significant recognition for a story about what is all too often dismissed nationally as a largely parochial tribe primarily publishing by, to, and for itself. A tribe that may sing beautifully, perhaps even angelically, but nonetheless often finds itself largely singing to its own choir.

I first encountered “Yellow Tulips” not because I was reading Mormon stories, but because I had started working my way through prestigious short story anthologies such as The Best American Short Stories and The Best Short Stories (O. Henry Prize). I’m working backwards starting in 2025, so I encountered this story rather quickly and was pleasantly surprised to discover a new writer (to me) writing sophisticated and compelling stories about Mormons which are clearly being recognized as such. Since I have not yet heard “Yellow Tulips” or Roberts’s other excellent Mormon story, “Water Wisdom” (EcoTheo Review, Autumn 2024), discussed in AML circles, I want to give these two excellent stories more exposure, hoping to create a broader dialogue between what is being published in Mormon and national presses.

I will try—as always—to pass through the dangerous straits between the Scylla (of not telling you enough about a story so that you can understand it) and the Charybdis (of giving away in advance too many details to completely spoil a story that you will hopefully read and enjoy for yourself someday). But I always consider it fair game to reveal in detail a story’s opening paragraph which generally sets the stage, tone, and theme for the story to follow.

“Yellow Tulips” begins with an ominous omen that occurred the “week the novel coronavirus came to Utah” when a 5.7 magnitude earthquake caused the “golden trumpet—which had been pressed to Moroni’s lips for almost one hundred and thirty years—[to fall] clattering from his grasp.” Given that one of Moroni’s purposes is to announce the “immanence of the Second Coming of the lord Jesus Christ,” the narrator’s son believes this to be “a much clearer signal than God customarily sends.” Finding Roberts’s description of this coincidence of events alarming myself, I even fact checked him to see if he was perhaps taking some poetic license here. Not at all. Trump did, in fact, declare a national emergency on March 13. Within a week, an earthquake caused Moroni’s trumpet to fall on March 18. They say that fact is stranger than fiction. I guess that’s true even in Mormonland. Or perhaps even especially in Mormonland.

Not only is Moroni’s fallen trumpet a clearer signal than God customarily sends, but Roberts’s clever use of this first symbolic image also launches us headlong into a Mormon story more dramatically than we are customarily used to. Firmly grounded in both contemporary Utah history and ancient Mormon lore, Roberts charges right out of the gate straight into the heart of Mormonism. What could be more Mormon than a good old-fashioned End Times jumpscare? Or as the late prophet Russell M. Nelson himself recently put it: “Do the spiritual work to find out for yourselves, and please do it now. Time is running out.” That Moroni’s fallen trumpet is now on display in the BYU library perhaps renders it some kind of Mormon relic. Our Shroud of Turin, at least, if not quite our Holy Grail. But will it also become a potent reminder to future generations that earthquakes presage the Second Coming? At least if they read Roberts’s story—but don’t quite grasp its tongue-in-cheek irony—it will.

If Mormon eschatology provides the backdrop—the backbone if you will—of Roberts’s story, it is quotidian everyday Mormon communities, from their centers to their fringes, which provide its flesh and blood. Immediately, we are introduced to Old Bill Nilsson, an easily recognizable, almost stereotypical, ward member who tends to the “community bowery,” fixes “a family’s sprinkler system” before they even know it is broken, and frequently steps in to babysit “at a moment’s notice.” But Roberts adds personality and gravitas to this stock character by having him, in the final moment of his life, tell his friends “how much they meant to him,” deliver a “heartfelt prayer,” and recite a “love poem” to his wife of fifty-five years before literally dying “the very moment he finished bearing his testimony.” In Nilsson’s daughter’s terms, this is one “bad-ass” way to go. If Moroni’s fallen trumpet pronounces the fate of a people—if not the entire world—Old Bill’s demise signals the fate of its most orthodox individual members as they pass—in tried and true Mormon fashion—one random act of kindness (not to mention of devotion to God and family) at a time.

After establishing his story’s Mormon bona fides, however, Roberts quickly transitions from this tribal elder comfortably situated at the ward’s warm center to the narrator and his boy who find themselves at Old Bill’s funeral sitting on the much cooler fringes in “folding chairs in the overflow area at the back of the chapel . . . all the way in the rear—so far back that we were practically in the multipurpose room, a basketball hoop overhead.” Maybe that’s where you sit yourself, but if you do, don’t worry; I’m right there with you. It is from these characters’ peripheral vantagepoint then that Roberts provides us with a unique view perhaps not only of Mormonism per se, but also more broadly of Utah at large (during the dark days of Covid) or possibly even the human condition in toto, all as seen from Mormonism’s outfield bleachers.

It is here in the margins, therefore, that we find the marrow and the bones of Roberts’s story: the boy, Brigham, provides the perspective of a mentally disabled “child inside his mind and heart,” while Abraham Sorensen, his narrator-father, reveals the perspective of a marginally active Mormon who attends “sacrament meeting nearly every Sunday,” but priesthood meeting only “sometimes, if the boy wasn’t acting up.” That Abraham and his wife Wendy’s marriage is “surely a subject of gossip in our ward” because a “more tolerant world” is beginning to “recognize the signs” only further suggests that Abraham is probably not entirely orthodox. He pays his tithing, but his calling is never mentioned. Presumably, there is a good chance that he doesn’t even have one. It is from the ward’s margins then that Abraham and Brigham ultimately provide a running commentary on Covid-era Mormon Utah—perhaps not altogether unlike Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old Muppets who comment with light humor on the Muppet show from high up in the balcony box. They are still Muppets, of course, but they simply see and comment on the show from a different marginal perspective.

I won’t give you some kind of play-by-play account of their observations, but they collectively reveal how the more orthodox members of the ward treat the disabled with varying degrees of compassion, vainly attempt to preserve their youthful appearances, nosily police the boundaries of their neighborhoods, and at least in one case piously display a “life-sized statue of Christ” in their suburban yards. These observations may gently probe at some of Mormon culture’s peculiarities, perhaps even its all-too-human weaknesses, but without a hint of malice. The women in the ward may be “booth tanned” and the suburban Christ may be “excessive,” but Brigham and Abraham seem more amused than particularly perturbed by any of this. Moreover, Roberts’s story generally shows a gracious understanding that people are people wherever you go, and even the occasional rudeness toward Brigham’s disabilities seems to be charitably forgiven as perhaps resulting more from ignorance than cruelty.

At the end of the day, however, Roberts’s story is not about Moroni’s trumpet, whose apocalypse ultimately proves to be no more than a no-show (at least probably not in our lifetimes at any rate), but rather about the lilies—or to be more precise—the tulips of the field. After all, the story is titled after the tulips, and Roberts deftly uses them—together with crocuses, daffodils, lilacs, irises, columbine, daisies, allium, lavender, and other flowers—to tell a symbolic story within the story.

The true message of Roberts’s story then lies neither in Old Bill’s wholesome do-goodery and devotion, nor even in Brigham and Abraham’s scattershot peripheral observations on the warp and woof of Utah Mormonism, but rather in the rich diversity of flowers which cover the beautiful landscape as an “expression of optimism” and a reminder that “everyone deserves a chance to thrive on their own terms.” Even if they sit in the overflow bleachers at the back of the church or are “too simple to have been baptized into [their] own religion.” A worthy lesson indeed. At a much-needed moment to boot.

In the end, therefore, the story is entirely as advertised. At its most fundamental level it is ultimately about both tulips—among other flowers—and yellowness—among other colors. I’ve already told you how Roberts beautifully uses flowers as symbols of optimism and inclusion—things we can all use more of in our own troubled times—but you’ll have to read the story yourself to see how exquisitely he uses colors, too. The flowers plus the colors make for a brilliantly crafted and deeply moving story with a universal message that extends far beyond the at times narrow confines of the Mormon corridor.

And “Water Wisdom” once again explores the fringes of Mormonism, telling the story of Donna Smith, a former Relief Society president with her own “eccentric streak,” and Todd Lundin, a true odd duck who attends church regularly, but only sacrament meeting, and even that only for his grandparents’ sake. His ward, however, sees him primarily as a “problem,” if not an “affliction,” a “scourge,” and a “pest.” Roberts puts it bluntly right out of the gate: “Foxhill Ward had a problem. His name was Todd. It was the way he smelled.” If Donna is merely an eccentric, Todd is perhaps something closer to at least a misfit, if not an outright outcast or even a pariah.

And it all starts with how Todd smells, but Roberts is sort of playing a trick on the reader here. It is not that Todd has too poor hygiene, but rather that he has too rich taste. He reeks, but he reeks of “too much” Guerlain Shalimar, a designer perfume which—after a mix-up in Yugoslavia—he has been able to purchase at a discount on the internet. It is tasked to Donna to try to talk to Todd about what the ward perceives as a “problem” because “this was the sort of problem Donna Smith was made for.”

We’ve all been there before in a ward with both a Todd and a Donna, so no one should be surprised when Donna is at best no more than partially successful in her attempt to gently reform Todd, having to ultimately concede to the “women of the ward that they would simply have to outlast [Todd’s] supply” of perfume. If you are hearing echoes of Levi S. Peterson’s “The Christianizing of Coburn Heights,” you are not alone. They both depict this classic Mormon showdown which is currently showing right now in a matinee performance every week in a ward near you. Donna displays the exhausting patience of a saint, while Todd shows the determined intransigence of, well, of a Todd. Or Peterson’s Rendella Kranpitz.

Eventually, Todd does “tone down” the perfume, but only because he “shift[s] his attention to couture,” now showing up to church in a “Dirk Bikkembergs jacket” with a red tailcoat like a “circus ringleader” or a “Junya Watanabe for Comme des Garçons,” the “exact garment worn on a runway in Milano.” When Donna tries to suggest that what’s “appropriate for a fashion show in Italy might not be appropriate for a church service in Bountiful, Utah,” she is only met with Todd’s “non sequitur” that he is “tall and slender,” so he can “usually fit the clothes the models wear” which conveniently are often “sold online for a fraction of the price.” Rendella Kranpitz might have been indigent, while Todd Lundin arrives with a “mephitis of money and designer fragrance” earned in the IT business and some successful speculation on web domain names in the early days of the internet, but ultimately their “problems” aren’t about either money or the lack of it.

The real issue here is conformity, fitting in, playing the game, and in this sense—whatever else it may be—Roberts’s story is suggesting, and I believe correctly, that at the end of the day, Mormonism—perhaps like any other social system—is at least in part a high stakes game of cultural expectations. Roberts’s Donna and Petersen’s President Colligan may play this game more deftly than most, with differing degrees of tact given the differing degrees of their respective “problems,” but underneath Mormonism’s multiple layers of theology, doctrine, history, and orthopraxis, lies this bedrock layer of playing the unpredictable game of how to meet—or subvert—cultural expectations. These expectations may vary some in nature and degree from one local ward to the next, perhaps even proving to be their most prevalent and petty in Utah if not the larger Morridor—hence the frequent complaints, even gripes, about the church’s own Utah culture “problem”—but you are just hiding your head in the sand if you want to pretend that much of Mormon life does not revolve around learning how to play Mormonism’s intricate and nuanced cultural games, or dance its sober and chaste dances, or even precariously juggle its dangerous bowling pins and chainsaws.

If “Yellow Tulips,” is a clarion call for inclusion, “Water Wisdom” is a jazz ensemble riffing on the need to loosen the rules of Mormonism’s cultural games—or at the very least learn how to play them with more tact and compassion. This is indeed an Acasta Gneiss level bedrock of the new Mormon short story as a rapidly globalizing church, which actively proselytizes new recruits from the margins of society and even inevitably accumulates an ever-increasing number of homegrown “problems” from within its own tribe, must increasingly deal with the culturally relative, constantly shifting, often arbitrary, and at times outright damaging rules of its cultural games. Merely including the Black gospel hymn, “Amazing Grace,” and the 1960s social protest barnburner, “This Little Light of Mine,” in the church’s new global hymnbook may be a start, but let’s face it, it’s not going to put the lid back on the chaotic Pandora’s box of cultural diversity—or even just merely personal individual eccentricities—which is the 21^st-century church.

Our best short story tellers now constantly remind us of this fact—not so much to simply gently poke fun at Mormon narrowmindedness or even heavy-handedness in dealing with these simple, yet simultaneously complex, quotidian dynamics of cultural diversity in the modern world, although they also do that—but rather more profoundly to remind us that at its core literature teaches us something essential about the human experience. About how to be human. About how to be more human. About how to be better humans.

Donna’s largely futile attempts to fellowship Todd may overreach a bit in trying to clip his wings or corral him with a shepherd’s crook back into the fold, but they are at least sincere, genuine, and compassionate. She may try to warn him off his designer perfume and high couture, but at the end of the story she does have an honest, open, and frank discussion with Todd about his view of God and whether he ultimately “believe[s] in the teachings of the church,” having already anticipated his response “not most of them.”

Here Donna does not try at all to silence Todd’s doubts even if she does ultimately bear her testimony to him after a fashion. But Donna’s testimony is a vulnerable one with a decisive difference and a subtle twist from the stock—beyond a shadow of a doubt—ones that we hear all too often in sacrament meeting, and it ultimately acknowledges that the space that separates Donna and Todd is perhaps less than anyone might have supposed. Their whole encounter from beginning to end is played with subtlety, nuance, and mutual respect, rending it only a gentle rebuke, perhaps even little more than just a simple reminder, that Mormons, like all people, could always be reminded of the need to better accept and even embrace those who “never learned to fit it.”

In what I can only call an extremely clever subterfuge, however, the real prophetic warning calling Mormons to repentance in “Water Wisdom” perhaps has much more to do with Donna’s less obvious eccentricities than Todd’s more noticeable so-called “problematic” ones. Once again, take Roberts’s title seriously. Arguably, this story is first and foremost not simply a subtle plea for kindness and inclusion, but rather an outright screed demanding the real need for water conservation in the parched, thirsty landscape of the American West because Donna’s eccentricity is that she has xeriscaped her yard, creating a “property as ecologically sound as a mountain meadow.” That this is a prophetic call to repentance for a profligate, wasteful people is suggested, not so subtly, when Roberts describes her tri-colored yard of “black rainforest pebbles, porcelain white rocks, [and] red lava chips” as having “nothing else quite like it in Davis county.” Our humanity may depend on learning to better accept the Todds of the world, but our very existence may depend on there being more Donnas.

The fringiest Mormon in the story, therefore, may ultimately be not so much the dandy Todd but the eco-warrior Donna. I leave you to read for yourself just how Roberts develops his prophetic parable of the West’s mismanaged water resources aside from merely mentioning that Robert’s once again returns to symbols taken from nature to connect these two stories by showing how water, and the refuge that it provides for waterfowl, nicely ties together the story’s dual pleas to preserve all of our planet’s often neglected precious resources—both human and natural.

Ultimately, are Roberts’s stories merely uniquely Mormon stories after all, or are they more universal stories about both literal and symbolic flowers, birds, water, rocks, deer—and colors? Maybe Roberts’s most significant contribution to Mormon letters is not even his astute and comic observations about Mormon life, but his ability to connect that life to larger contexts and universal themes which speak to our common shared humanity in the Age of the Anthropocene when that very humanity is threatened by our inattention to the natural world that surrounds and sustains us. Roberts’s careful attention to that larger natural world—and the brilliant ways that he writes about it, engaging it both as a symbol and an existential reality—is only one reason why his stories about the Mormon fringes have begun to take center stage.